Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 4:49 am Post subject: What would it take for you to learn a constructed language?

I made the same thread on my board, but I'd like to have two samples to look at.

Yes, another thread about these languages. Considering that wacky English is studied more than any other language in the world, it's obvious that most people are motivated by something other than ease of study. Money, travel, prestige, etc. are just some of the things it can bring.

Now what about constructed languages, the ones that their proponents are trying their hardest to expand?

By the way, we're talking about such languages as Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Klingon, etc.

At least half a billion, if not more, and it would have to sound beautiful to my ears. Auditory aesthetics are a huge motivation for me! I like for languages to sound mystical and deep. None of this "An-i-yAAAAAA!" and "Shi-do-OOOOOOO" whiny crap. (but I learn Korean because I live here and it's good for me) Have you ever heard Icelandic? It sounds like elvish. I don't know what the population of Iceland is, but I'd learn it for them. Languages are easy to learn when you love the people, because they exist for the people.

I voted for a few thousand myself. I think I would feel lonely learning something that ony a few dozen people used, unless we were spies or some secret group with a LOT of influence.

I've heard Icelandic; I wanted to study it at first but since I don't know any people from there and the verb conjugation and whatnot isn't that easy I went for Norwegian first. How much is a ticket there? It's actually a little bit close to Iceland from Korea than it is from Calgary, where I'm from.

Most constructed languages promote themselves quite badly. "But it's easy!" is usually their selling point, and that's not enough. It's like trying to sell something no-one wants by harping on the fact that it's super cheap. It still just looks like garbage to people.

d503, which one are you learning? Or is it so secret no-one here has ever heard of it?

By the way, I can describe what it's like learning one now. It's mostly similar to a regular one but not quite. When learning a regular one you have periods where things go well and you make good progress, then there are other days where you are just baffled by how things are supposed to work and you can't make heads or tails out of it. Then there are the days where you just work on irregular things, weird spellings for the same word depending on what function they perform in a sentence, words that are deformed and mushed together with another one so much that there's no way you could find it in a dictionary and you just have to ask someone who knows the language what the hell it means.

A constructed language still feels like a language though because you read over things you don't know, check up new words and memorize them; sometimes you forget and have to go back, and so on. But when you've learned one thing you're done, since there are no exceptions (except with weird ones like Klingon and Elvish that don't want to be easy to learn). You spend a bit of time wrapping your head around a concept and...you're done! Oh. Now you can use that whenever you want.

They're definately not effortless though, and they're not codes, nor pidgins. You can't just make up a word on the spot because people aren't geared towards that. We use words by themselves to represent little bits of reality, but they don't necessarily govern an equal area, nor do they always avoid overlap. So it doesn't feel like the doubleplusgood of 1984 either.

Here's a bit from the dictionary of the one I've been working on, and you can see that it's just as detailed as that of any other dictionary:

Just a footnote: I learned a little about Iceland from watching the Oprah Winfrey show recently. (One could look it up on the web of course).

Population: Maybe less than 300,000 (less than Newfoundland)

Police do not carry guns.

It is illegal (?) (or at least taboo) to make racist remarks in public.

Single parents face no taboo.

They like to party during 4 hours sunlight in winter, or near 24 hours sunlight in summer.

The women look good. So does the natural environment, with volcanoes (?..I think) and natural springs.
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My brother in Montreal works with a guy from Iceland. I tried some of the traditional food once. It was good. Raw reindeer meat was part of it I think. On the Oprah show she was offered lamb *beep* by the Iceland woman, but declined. But she had some of the local "soju"

Joined: 31 Jan 2003Location: I get so little foreign language experience, I must be in Koreatown, Los Angeles.

Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 1:49 pm Post subject:

JacktheCat wrote:

And even now, I have to watch myself when writing on the board that I don't misspell a word or do the ye olde letter reversal.

You mean like a lot of other people do, without a word of apology?

JacktheCat wrote:

Over two years in Korea and I am still only at a beginner intermediate level in Korean.

I've been here over five years and I'm not so glib either.
And I scored in the 99th percentile on a foreign language aptitude test.
Maybe you're putting yourself down more than you should, Jack the Cat.